The 6 on a single IC trick. With 3 way toggle switch High, Medium, Low cap switching. I seem to use them more than I imagined although I've only been playing around with this for a day.

4040 DIVIDER

An interesting chip although it needs all its outputs and clock inverted to be useful, particularly if you want to trigger drums. I used two 40106 ICs to do this.

AND/NAND/XOR GATES

The AND seems to be useful. NAND is not as easy to wrap your brain around. Well, not for me anyway. But with the NAND other gates can be made so I put it in there. The XOR is nice for ring modish sounds and drones.

PERCUSSION

I originally was going to use the Korg Monotribe circuits. I made them up and tweaked them somewhat. Got the snare and an open and closed hat sounding quite good. But in the end I used the Paia Drum Tone circuit. The drums can be a little tribal sounding for my liking. I did manage to fiddle a bit and make a heavier kick from a duplicate of the synth drum component. I put six of the Ken Stone Gate to trigger circuits on the inputs just to clean things up. There are two big stripboards behind that panel! It's a handy module to have, kind of like a sketch pad to doodle some rhythms with. It seems to turn 30 minute 'shifty sessions' into something almost musical. The drums are Snare, Clave, Wood Block, Synth Drum, Conga, High Tom, Low Tom (the original bass drum), and the modified synth drum Bass Drum I have six other gate to triggers on the panel below which will be used for nicer external drums.

MELODY GENERATOR/LOWPASS FILTERS

The classic Melody Generator, just for old times sake. And the WSG filters below. I don't seem to use the melody generator much so far. I think the 4046 oscillators are a lot more useful. The filters are handy though. I'll probably turf this panel out and do something different. Maybe make the filters voltage controlled with a home made vactrol and add a couple of triangle oscillators above.

Bottom Row:

4046 VCO's/R-2R's/GLIDE

Another well worn module. Two of each. The R-2R's are hooked up to the oscillators with a glide circuit using a LM358. These are getting used a lot. There's a range switch on each one too. The LFO mode goes very slow which is useful for random clock tempos.

DECADE COUNTER

Standard 4017 decade counter.

4015 SHIFT REGISTER

Chained into 8, with a loop switch and (pseudo) random option using a XOR IC. Good for throwing in hippy drum rolls on those toms while the 4040 controls the other drums.

4066 SWITCHES/4013 FLIP FLOPS

The 4066 isn't being used much at all at the moment. Most of these circuits had been sitting bagged up in a box for almost three years. When I pulled them out I culled most of them and had to rebuild the others with protection diodes and mounting holes. I thought the 4066 was some sort of VCA . You can't really feed audio through it. An AND gate seems to do the job so these will go. The 4013 is fun!

GATE TO TRIGGER/ADAPTERS

Both of these are Ken Stone circuits built on stripboard. Six gate to triggers, and three stomp box adapters. The adapters are essential if you want to hook effects up. I originally just had a 6.5MM socket wire to a banana socket, but things weren't meant to be that easy.

PANNING MIXER

MFOS panning mixer. Four channels in. Headphone output and two 6.5MM mono sockets L & R. A great little mixer! Four channels seems to be enough.

The case was made from Tasmanian oak bought off the shelf at the local hardware. The rounded corners were done with the same timber but the stuff you use around skirting. It was hand sawn and nailed together. Gave it about twelve coats of enamel paint, sanding with wet and dry paper between coats.

The synth runs on a 12V AC adapter/wall wart going to a +/GROUND/- board I bought as a cheap kit from Jaycar. I'm amazed it runs all this stuff! Calculating current and what not is a bit much for me. I wanted 10 panels. I pushed my luck at 12 and crossed my fingers! I'll have to learn about this when it comes to powering the pile of other circuits I have bagged up here.

It was painful making this thing. It was nowhere near what I had drawn up. I had massive problems with the panel art. I printed onto Alumajet, the white faced metal, but the colours were coming out streaky and weak. About the only colour which would print was black, as long as the line work was minimal. A lot of work drawing spaceship panels was wasted and I had to redesign everything to suit the limitation of the panel printing, hence the overall white look. It was disappointing in that regard but it ended up looking passable. I'll be rethinking the panel making method for the modular...

I'll do some recording over the next day or so and post in the appropriate section. I see the real potential of the logic synth is in its ability to create complex patterns to sequence other things.

Looks great, -minus-! Even if it didn't turn out as you had planned. I like the logic symbols wirh the LEDs in them. And I'm always impressed when people do the circles like you did for the divider & counter.

-minus- wrote:

So finally I get to escape Lunettaland... or do I?

Probably not! You'll play with this and want to make a brother or sister for it with different circuits!

The 4066 isn't being used much at all at the moment. Most of these circuits had been sitting bagged up in a box for almost three years. When I pulled them out I culled most of them and had to rebuild the others with protection diodes and mounting holes. I thought the 4066 was some sort of VCA . You can't really feed audio through it. An AND gate seems to do the job so these will go.

I've found the 4066 does make a good (or at least very simple to build) VCA, as described in the A VCA of sorts thread. But with a digital signal into the CV it will just act as an AND gate, so perhaps not much use in a machine with only digital outs.

Until now I haven't really messed around much with logic paths. It was always such an effort dragging out the boards and twisting wires together for patches. It's a lot easier now I have somehow managed to finish something.

There are still a few issues to resolve. I have yet to invert the 4040 clock input, and there are a couple of sockets loose. That's one thing I won't do again: buy cheap banana sockets from ebay . I have already replaced two panels with decent quality sockets and can see the entire machine being upgraded in future.

I've been recording some sounds and will post something shortly. I need more leads! I only have about 20, which makes things somewhat limiting. Need to speak to a bank about a loan .

installed last module today. case is nothing special: 2x3U rack blanks for the front panel, a section of plank cut on a slight diagonal for the sides; plywood and screws cover the rest. I already have another two panel blanks for its planned sibling.

the color-coding is as follows:

black socket/green LED --> digital signal in
red socket/red LED --> digital signal out
red socket/yellow LED --> control voltage out
yellow socket/no LED --> control voltage in
green socket/green LED --> binary number in
blue socket/green LED --> clock in (where different to digital in)

the recording is just a quick one-take featuring a waveshaped VCO controlled by (F), a few tones from (Q) being randomly selected by (P) and (C), some noodling on (Q) thru the pitch tracker thing (D), and some digital noise (C) through a VCA controlled by (I)

Started working on a Lunetta-esque modular synth heavily inspired by some of my favorite designs in Nic Collins' Handmade Electronic Music, Horowitz & Hill's The Art of Electronics, Forrest Mimms' Engineers Notebooks, my own happy accidents and stuff I've seen on this forum.

Future modules that are either in the works or at least conceptualized:
Another PLL
VCAs
Tunable CV Keyboard (there's a basic schematic in the DIY section of my blog)
Piezo Driver/Pickup system for physical filtering ala Tudor's Rainforest (cuz VCFs are boring and complicated)
Logic/Switch/R2R Ladder/Counter/Shift Register Super Module (essentially a mini-Lunetta for driving the rest of the synth)

Currently the lid of the box is used as a sandbox area for incorporating other equipment, but I'm planning on adding more modules down there eventually as well.

It was painful making this thing. It was nowhere near what I had drawn up. I had massive problems with the panel art. I printed onto Alumajet, the white faced metal, but the colours were coming out streaky and weak. About the only colour which would print was black, as long as the line work was minimal. A lot of work drawing spaceship panels was wasted and I had to redesign everything to suit the limitation of the panel printing, hence the overall white look. It was disappointing in that regard but it ended up looking passable. I'll be rethinking the panel making method for the modular...

This is easily one of the most beautiful DIY modulars I have ever seen so I wouldn't stress about it! I would love to be able to make something this attractive.

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